Hard Things I’ve Faced and Overcome
- having a baby brother
- pooping my pants in kindergarten, not once but twice
- cutting my foot on a shovel in the back of my dad’s work truck and getting two stitches
- on that same cut, getting accused of picking a scab by my older sister
- needing my training wheels too long
- learning to swim by being thrown in the pool
- at age 7, having a nephew who had a lot of birth defects
- at age 7, having my father die of a massive sudden heart attack
- getting in trouble for sticking out my tongue at Mrs. Kesselring
- jumping from the back of a station wagon trying to use folding lawn chairs as crutches–my knee did not turn out well
- not making All Stars in softball after playing for 7 years
- not making the cheer leading squad, even the semi-finals
- getting through college in 6 1/2 years, and not ending up with a profession
- having my first nephew die from his failing organs at age 20
- choosing to be a teacher and going back to college, again
- biting a boy’s thumb when I was a youth group leader and he was in junior high
- facing my ACoA issues before my first daughter was born
- moving across country for my husband’s work when my daughters were in grades 7 and 10
- moving across country for my husband’s work and then not being able to find my own teaching job for the whole next year
- losing to sudden death a brother and sister
- being accused of cursing by students in one of my early grade 5 classes
- being in Day 89 of isolation to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic
Sunday, Day 89 in Bahrain. This is Day 54 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. Today’s prompt came from Kate Speer CEO of The Dogist. Read her courageous and freeing story here and here in her TEDx Talk.